The sun is shining so the Pikmin are doing quite well, keeping the same rank, just behind Mario vs. Donkey Kong on Game Boy Advance. Wario World on the other hand fades slowly, not surprising for such a poor title.

The ranking is hardly more interesting than Samurai Nintendo at the moment, Wario World is a new entry (yeah, it's only released now in Japan) with numbers about the same as Four Swords +, Pikmin 2 sold slightly more and... yaaawn. Not exactly interesting.

Little Pikmin climbed ! and everybody else fell. It's quite the contrary of last week's results, except this time the falls are harder: out Four Swords + and Custom Robo. 2 months... it must be the shortest stay in the top 50 for a Zelda game. Naturo 2 seems unstoppable; even though it loses one spot this week, we'll remember it's been almost half a year it's here !

Little Pikmin fell ! And fell quite hard as it lost more than 80% of its past sale strenght, one reason could be the lack of stocks; seemingly Nintendo had released a few Pikmin 2 games and all of them are gone ! Other than that, not much to say, the three other games managed to go up thanks to the Golden Week holidays.

Hurrah for Pikmin ! In its first week, it sold more than the first weeks of Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, Custom Robo Battle Revolution and The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords +, altogether ! (71.000+32.000+52.000=155.000) That's definitely a nice score, by far the best GC performance of the year and a nice beginning. Hopefully its success won't subside too quickly. Now an update, as I got newer results for this week from Dengeki. Interestingly, we learn that the first Pikmin sold 95.000 units in its first week and reached a total sales number of 507.000. We also learn that Naruto 2 has sold 378.000 units. The biggest surprise this week though, is probably the unexpected return of Donkey Konga and Atsumare!! Made in Wario in the charts after more being 10 weeks away. The reason is proablably because they are now cheaper and there were the Japanese Golden Week celebrations.

Ouch. It's hot for Nintendo at the moment in Japan. As you can see, there's only one title left in the ranking, and it's Four Swords. Hopefully Pikmin 2 will come to cheer us up next week. It'll take more than fragile little Pikmin to consolidate the GameCube in the next months though: practically no game is coming out.

Severe falls for both Gundam and Custom Robo, Mario Party's gone again, Naruto's up two places, Zelda lost two. Naruto 2 is surprisingly second best selling GC title at the moment. And that is all what's happening this week, see you next time !

Things should keep going this way for about three more weeks; till the release of Pikmin 2, we will see the last remaining GameCube titles fading out of the chart. The question is how many of them will be left after April 29 ? There's no more GC title in the top 20 and the only noticeable changes happening this week is that Custom Robo finally falls behind Gundam and Mario Party 5 replaces Mario Kart at the bottom of the ranking.

It became almost a tradition for Sega's titles: one week and gone. And thus, bye bye Puyo Puyo Fever ! With few new releases this week, there's improvement in GameCube ranks and a surprising observation. First of all, Four Swords + and Gundam: Senshitachi no Kiseki slide less fast than before. Custom Robo for its part even manage to go one place up and confirms being the most successful game among the recent releases. But the surprise though, is not here at all, it's at the bottom. Mario Kart is back and Naruto 2 climbs up 11 places, what is surprising about that is these games are very old (November and December 2003) and still doing very well, especially compared to Four Swords + and Gundam. It underlines what we were reporting last week, that games of this first quarter of the year have failed to attract players unlike the titles of the end of last year.

Nintendo is facing a difficult challenge for the rest of the year: the need of releasing mega-hits. The first three months showed us some key titles failing to achieve decent sales numbers. Four Swords +, Gundam and The Twin Snakes are moving too fast downward with poor results. Only Custom Robo, which manages to hang at the same spot this week, is doing rather well. The competition is fierce and Nintendo and its allies didn't necessarily made the right choices, the latest Zelda is too much a promotion of the Game Boy connection, The Twin Snakes doesn't have the appeal of an original Metal Gear game and Gundam doesn't seem to draw the fans. In about a month and half, the big show (the E3) will begin and it will be indeed a very important time for Nintendo to demonstrate they've been hard at work for the past months and maybe years on games that will definitely focus every player's attention. And it's not simply a wish, it's what they absolutely need to give them a boost.

Twenty-two new titles enter the multi-format chart this week. This explains why all last week's GC titles at the bottom of the ranking, four games in total, abruptly disappeared. But their sudden departure has been avenged by four sharp swords ! The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords +, this new action style Zelda managed to grab the fourth spot with a very humble number of sales, 6 or 8 times less than the Wind Waker in its first week, and performed less well than Custom Robo. On its heels, Gundam is a little disappointment too, selling twice less than Custom Robo and just a little bit better than The Twin Snakes, though reports are contradictory here, some saying than Gundam is a little after Four Swords + with about 50.000 units sold as well. The main titles for this month have been released and so far there hasn't been anything impressive: not a single one managed to score 100.000 units, not even close, in the first week sale.

It was quite predictable if you ask me: Metal Gear Solid - The Twin Snakes, didn't start very well. 32.000 units, is a low start for any game, even more for such a famous franchise but let's bear in mind its drawbacks: not matter what was said it's still a remake, it was directed by a US team (never helps to sell in Japan) and it didn't get any rave reviews. Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life had about the same sales numbers in its first week and that didn't bring it luck. Custom Robo falls surprisingly fast too despite better reviews. On the opposite side of the ranking, we still find our usual trio, this time back in its quatuor shape as Mario Party 5 returns. Contrarily to last week, Pokemon Colosseum and Naruto 2 are the ones to lose a few places.

Not as well as we would have liked but well enough, Custom Robo entered the ranking. With a bit more than 70.000 units, it sold about as much as Pokemon Box in the first week. It's not so good (more than 100.000 would be) but it's not that bad either (less than 50.000 would be), we may hope that it will keep its sales steady in the next weeks although the past has shown us that it's a pretty rare phenomenon, even more when major titles (Metal Gear, Zelda, Gundam) are around the corner. The three old remaining titles keep delaying their departure as much as possible, Naruto 2 and Pokemon Colosseum even managed to climb up a few places.

It's time for new games to arrive because things look rather gloomy for the GameCube at the moment. There are only three GC titles left in the ranking and they are located in the bottom. Naruto 2 is still the one to perform the best among them, while Mario Kart swapped position with Pokemon Colosseum. Today, March 4, Custom Robo is released, hopefully it'll have a strong impact on next week charts.

The remaining GameCube titles are all quite low in the ranking. There's only one more week to go before interesting things start happening though. This week, except the come back of Donkey Konga, there's no significant change. One might argue that Everything or Nothing losing 11 places is a significant change, but maybe the more significant about it is that this game is still in the Japanese charts. Which is indeed surprising for a FPS and one developed by EA.

"Oh my goodness, what happened !?" Why this sudden fall for all the GameCube titles ? Why Donkey Konga, 1080 Silverstorm, One Piece Grand Battle 3 and Made in Wario are all out ? Why is there nothing new but one single GC entry ? Ladies and gentlemen, don't panic, it's almost all Nintendo's fault. Among the 20 first titles of the video games ranking this week, there are 13 new entries ! That's huge, especially at this time of the year. That's why so many games went down or went out. And among these 13 new entries, guess what ? 10 of them are from Nintendo and that's huge too. Nintendo didn't actually release 10 new games, they re-released some Famicom classics for Game Boy Advance, the exact conversions of some famous NES games under the label Famicom Mini. And all of them made it in the top 20 ! Here are the games and their ranking this week: Super Mario Bros. (5th), The Legend of Zelda (6th), Donkey Kong (8th), Ice Climber (9th), Xevious (12th), Bomberman (13th), Pacman (14th), Excitebike (15th), Mappy (16th) and Star Soldier (18th). These games are sold only 2000 yens, barely a third of a GameCube title, which is still a very good investment given the price they cost to produce... Some Famicom Mini even managed to outsell the Eye Toy (10th) for its first week release ! Ha ha ha ! That had me laughing for a long while. The old games beating the high-tech crap ! The old Donkey Kong selling better than the Eye Toy, can you believe it ? It's like a dream. Not the kind of thing which could happen in Europe sadly. Anyway, it's unknown how long these games will survive in the ranking, I don't think they will for long, but it will surely encourage Nintendo and others to release more. If, on the other hand, they do last long in the ranking, it could have a meaningful impact on Nintendo strategy... what about re-releasing more old games world wide, or even continuing old systems ?

P.S.: You can buy the Famicom Mini here (search "Famicom Mini" for more titles).

Games keep falling, all but the oldest among them, Made in Wario. Donkey Konga is the Nintendo title falling the fastest at the moment in the ranking, proving this music genre not so popular. One good thing is that 1080 didn't go down as bad as last week.

It's all so quiet, just as expected. Naruto 2 and Donkey Konga manage to hang at the same spot while One Piece moves one step upward. With Warioware celebrating its 4th month stay by losing only 2 spots, that's the best happening this week. The worst is a sharp fall for 1080 (about 20 places) and a fall faster than expected for the three Christmas best sellers.

1080 Silverstorm (known in the west as Avalanche) enters the ranking at the 17th spot. I don't remember seeing SSX 3 on any system doing so well in Japan, so even if it's not such a great start, it's rather good given the period of the year and all the games around. And it's deserved, 1080 is a very good game, very fresh and entertaining to play. The other most important fact of this week, except a steady declines for all GC titles due to a heap of PS2 titles released, is the impressive come back of One Piece Grand Battle! 3 from the depths of the chart (70th) to the 34th place. However, from now on and till March, new GC games releases should have quite an insignificant impact on the ranking.

It's another disappointement for Sega, while we were hoping to see Kaijuu no Shima entering the top, it did not happen. Sonic Heroes is also losing more than 10 ranks, falling fast in the chart. Last year has been a bad one for Sega in Japan: Sonic Adventure DX, Billy Hatcher, Phantasy Star Episode III and now Sonic Heroes, none of these titles sold well enough, worse, they sold very poorly. With the possible buyout from Sammy, 2004 doesn't look much brighter for the old Nintendo rival. The planning for this year is really dull with only Puyo Puyo Fever and Virtua Fighter Cyber Generation announced so far, given Sammy's current stance about the company "less home games, more arcade games", things do not seem to be on the way to improve.

Bad news for the inauguration of the new ranking's design: all GC titles are down, sales seem to reduce by half, there's no new game to enter but three to leave including our poor Baten Kaitos. Yes, that's the after-Christmas effect. The whole month shouldn't be that gloomy though, hopefully as soon as next week, we should see a new entry from Sega, Kaijuu no Shima which looks like a nice cool game, and then 1080 Silverstorm and maybe The Sims.

This week is one entry, a big one, Sonic Heroes at the 13th spot, while the PS2 version, released at the same time, is 15 ranks lower at the 28th spot. That's one piece of good news and there are more. Nintendo games sell very well. Some Japanese must be investing their New Year money, "otoshidama", in games and so, Mario Party 5 and Mario Kart gain almost 100.000 units each despite being release for more than 1 and 2 months respectively. That's really huge and both of them along with Pokemon Colosseum hit the half-million mark, the first GC titles in the ranking this year to do so. Donkey Konga, released for a month, also enjoys this good fate with a major increase in its sale numbers, even Baten Kaitos gets one up at the bottom of the top.